Hi TTD. Watching the match between Boll and Aruna and several other matches of African players, it got me thinking. This tournament, saw many African players such as Aruna playing incredibly well and could par with the world elite. However, while watching it, it feels like they are much technically inferior to that world elite, their shots are very basic, they seem clumsy at times, but they make it up with great athleticism. I feel like before 40+ there were not many African players, let alone those who won any matches at all and now, with the new plastic ball, less technique is required from them and their unique athletic style has puzzled the minds of many of the world's elite.
Also, the Celluloid ball produces much more spin than the current 40+ plastic ball, Aruna would have not been able to counter against Timos spin during the celluloid ball era like he did yesterday in Rio.
Do you agree? Intersted in your thoughts.
aruna's attitude is really great, attack hard no matter what, timo actually read him well but failed to execute he simply was not there. he got frustrated didnt play with clear mind and when he did it was too late, a few lucky balls from aruna in the 6th set, some unforced errors by timo and aruna won with some smart tactics in the closing points.
ma long refuted quadri's attacks by standing a bit further away from the table when the point was transitioned to a rally which is also his style, boll plays closer to the table but stubbornly maybe, he thought he can countertopspin aruna's rockets and miss after miss the game was almost over in 3-0. even zhang jike had problems doing that in 2014 and won points against aruna simply by blocking.
Aruna's FH is very powerful dont let the weird technique fool you, his recovery is bad on the elite level because of the big unbalanced stroke, sometimes he can topspin hard for a 2nd time due to his great physicality but almost never a 3rd time, especially when the topspin rally changes tempo or placement. chuang chih yuan and boll tried to outpower him with same placements over and over and failed really hard, probably some big ego issues there if you ask me
For me I dont think that the 40 + has anything to do with it, yes boll's topspins would be much better, but same goes for aruna's spin/speed which would be greater
On the contrary, with a bigger ball it is required better technique in overall ability of a stroke because rallies are definitely getting longer. Aruna would be a beast in the era of hidden serves, deception serve followed by hard FH and who cares about technique
I was quite confident that boll would make a comeback because he won his 2 sets quite strong and figured out how to play quadri, but I got to give it to aruna with his smart risky tactics in the end of the 6th game
p.s. also bear in mind that boll has deuced 2 times in 2 consecutive sets being down 10-5 and 10-7 but aruna performed really well in the crucial points. I cant tell if timo underestimated him but for sure he didnt assess the situation well especially in the opening games. after he read the game it was too late